Yoga teacher’s lessons live on

Friday

Aug 31, 2012 at 2:00 AM

About 25 years ago, yoga teacher Katherine Trainor was looking for a place large enough for her weekly class.

Johanna Crosby

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

KEEPING HER MEMORY FRESH – Priscilla Saulnier poses in her garden by a statue honoring her late yoga teacher, Katherine Trainor. The surrounding plantings bear female names such as Lady’s Mantle and Helen’s Flowers.

Remembering Katherine Trainor

About 25 years ago, yoga teacher Katherine Trainor was looking for a place large enough for her weekly class.

She found the ideal space: roomy Baldwin Hall at the Federated Church in Hyannis. Next Saturday (Sept. 8), many of Trainor’s students will gather there for a special yoga class in honor of their beloved teacher from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Her birthday would have been Sept. 7.

“What better way to honor her memory on a day close to her special day by doing yoga together and sharing remembrances,” said Christine Roscoe, a certified yoga teacher of East Sandwich, who will lead the class.

Anyone who took a yoga class with Trainor, 73, who died on Oct. 10 after a bout with cancer, is welcome to attend the special class.

“We can all come together and do yoga in her honor and share remembrances,” Roscoe said. “Everybody misses her so much. We will do it in a fashion Katherine will be proud of.”

Roscoe will lead the moves Trainor did most frequently and say the quotes she often used during her classes. She’ll also ask the class to sit in a circle after the final relaxation, just like Trainor often did at the end of her classes, and share their feelings with the person seated next to them. There is no charge for the class, but donations will be accepted that will be used to buy an angel statue to grace Trainor’s gravesite at Woodside Cemetery in Yarmouth Port.

“Katherine loved angels,” Roscoe said. “Those of us who knew her considered her an earth angel.” The angel statue will make the plain gravesite “feel like Katherine’s spot,” Roscoe said. Plans are in the works to place the statue on the gravesite on Oct. 10 following a 9 a.m. Mass at St. Pius X Church in South Yarmouth. A brunch will follow at the Optimist Café in Yarmouth Port.

Trainor asked Roscoe, who was a student of hers for years, to take over the class when she was undergoing radiation treatments and felt too ill to teach. Roscoe says the last class Trainor taught was on her birthday last year. She died the following month. Roscoe continues to teach the yoga class every Wednesday morning from 9:30 to 11 at Baldwin Hall.

“I’m very happy to have the opportunity to carry it on in her fashion,” she said.

Trainor, who lived in Dennis Port, graduated from Anna Maria College and earned her master’s from Boston College. She was a member of the Community of the Sisters of Mercy of Worcester and an active member of St. Pius X Church. Trainor leaves behind a respected legacy as one of the first yoga teachers on Cape Cod.

“When she started, there were no yoga studios,” Roscoe said.

She found spaces at church halls.

“Churches are always gracious in letting you use their spaces,” said Roscoe.

Trainor also taught classes at local nursing homes and at Cape Cod Community College. She developed a large following; many students stayed with her for years.

“Yoga was her life,” Roscoe said. “She had so much knowledge and she was imparting that knowledge. She really knew yoga and how to unite the mind, body and spirit and bring it all together.”

Trainor taught a “gentle yoga” that incorporated various disciplines and a combination of yoga styles including Hatha, Qigong, yin, and Kundalini yoga along with some tai chi moves. Her yoga practice had a very strong spiritual element.

“She did fabulous meditations,” Roscoe said. “There was always something special about her class.”

“Katherine’s class was for everybody,” recalled Priscilla Saulnier of Centerville, a longtime student of Trainor’s and a member of the Federated Church of Hyannis.

This summer Saulnier, an avid gardener, designed and planted a memorial garden for her former yoga teacher. “Katherine’s Garden” is located in a section of Saulnier’s attractively landscaped yard.

“Katherine was a very feminine person and so am I,’ said Saulnier, who planned the garden so something will always be blooming during the season. In honor of Trainor, the centerpiece of the garden is a delicate-looking statue of a child angel sitting on a bench.

Saulnier still takes yoga class at Baldwin Hall every Wednesday morning and faithfully practices yoga every day on her own.

“It’s very calming,” she said. “You fall away from all the cares of the world. Yoga energizes and relaxes you.”